areaMan · HackerTrans

17 jaar geledendiscuss

you are missing the fact that the last "(3 times revenue today)" factor which you just dropped means you are expecting the company to triple its revenues next year, which means the normal rules won't apply (to that extent) so you can charge a premium today for potentially growing more than 100% YoY. On re-reading I guess you've managed to confuse me as well and my brain is about to explode from cognitive dissonance its experiencing right now.

areaMan

17 jaar geledendiscuss

There's an apocryphal story here in Dubai (most such stories are that or rumours but you couldn't help but wonder the veracity of such 'truths') that the owner of Majid Al Futtaim group (http://www.majidalfuttaim.com) is richer than Shiekh Mohammed - the ruler of Dubai, and on the surface it looks like it might be true.

areaMan

17 jaar geledendiscuss

What a great informative post! Thanks and thanks to Mahmud as well.

- There are 'middle-men' in the VC world that sell their services to unsuspecting young companies in order to get them capital - so they say. The trick is that once they have your signature on a piece of paper that gives them exclusivity they no longer have to do anything. If you find your own capital they will claim their pound of flesh.

I recently came across someone with biz plan (essentially one-person with a vague plan in his head and some details on a PPT) who has come here in Dubai in search of funding and exploring clients. I tagged along with this founder to a meeting with one such person - (I've never been involved even remotely with any VC/angels/startups - so I'm not really sure if I'm reading your description of middleman correctly) - and I was quite frankly there only to learn how these kind of deals/discussions take place. I was essentially a passive listener while the two of them discussed over coffee.

I was surprised by how it went. He asked for a 7% stake via some kind of a nominee account in exchange of getting a funding of around $1M + some upfront commission % off the actual funds he could get, and 25% stake for the investors. More importantly he said something about this nominee account means he is not listed as a stakeholder in any of company's legalities (I got the impression that he'd not be held for any future liabilities, lawsuits etc) yet he'd share in the profits....that part was confusing to me.

By all background checks, this guy seems like a well-connected investment consultant who has worked on bigger deals and he indicated this nominee stake thing in a off-hand way and said it was an industry norm. And all he would be doing was take this business plan and pitch it to investors in his network.

And get this: there is no real way to even evaluate or even remotely guesstimate the worth of this business, because as I said right now it's just a plan in someone's head, a shoddy website and cheapjack PPT with nothing really fleshed out.

What's the deal with this nominee stake thing? Certainly he needs to be compensated for his efforts but 7% sounded a bit too much. But what do I know.

Can someone tell me, if this is how just deals take place? If so would you call this angel investment or VC? And apart from the funding size, is there any real legal difference between angel investors and VCs?

areaMan

17 jaar geledendiscuss

Thanks for that info. Actually, I haven't even visited it. Just from what I've heard and considering that most tech. companies are situated there I assumed there must be atleast some dev. going on there. Any ideas where I should look at?

areaMan

17 jaar geledendiscuss

There is watwet.com (a twitter clone) which apparently has more users in this region than twitter. Then as mahmud mentioned, souq.com and cashu both from maktoob group (not part of this yahoo acquisition). As I said I am quite new here and quite out of personal touch in the tech scene here, so I am myself looking out for people to connect with. You can follow <a href="http://www.arabcrunch.com>arabcrunch.com</a>; for more startups from this region. This deal is also heavily covered there.

areaMan

17 jaar geledendiscuss

True dat!

mahmud, you seem to belong to this region or atleast have previous ties with working with people in this region. (I don't know, I'm just guessing based on some of your previous comments), so I guess you are the best person to ask this. Any news/info about if they are going to invest in expansion and hire more people? And any ideas how I can get plugged in the tech industry here in MiddleEast? I am a relative newbie in this region (previously worked in Bangalore/US for Fortune-10 companies, 7+ yrs work-ex) and even though I love the work here (we are a small shop with a big govt cust), I feel I lack an environment where I can come across other technical people and events and exciting things happening here and keep learninng and upgrading myself. Most of the tech companies (and hence I suppose the happenings) here are concentrated in glitzy Dubai Internet City, far away from my place. I guess I need a meetup with a techie or two and who knows where the network takes you.

areaMan

17 jaar geledendiscuss

For HN readers who may not be aware that much about M.East tech scene, let me state that this is huge. I am in UAE and even though I've been only an ocassional reader of Maktoob and not much attached to Yahoo, still I am excited.

areaMan

17 jaar geledendiscuss

Your (barely visible) footer "We hope all of the data here is accurate, but if you find that it is not please send comments/suggestions/bugs to @countrycodes."

what's the email ID again?

I'm sure you would've already seen it, but incase if not, try getting in as many features (OR NOT) from http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/dialing.html

It already supports abbreviations like USA and UK, but not UAE. Also auto-completion should come in only if I press the arrow or down keys. If I enter UK, it should not automatically assume UKraine.

areaMan

17 jaar geledendiscuss

I had this unusual ability to memorize entire chapters of Biology and History. And unusually I could do it only with these two subjects, as for me they were the most difficult to understand and relate to. Let me just give you an example. The tests papers would question things like: a) give any two symptoms of malaria (2 marks) b) list all symptoms of malaria (7 marks)

And I hated to lose marks and overall class rank because of this one stupid Biology, and let's say I covered malaria but this time they chose to ask about treatment for cholera.I reasoned to myself, they could ask anything. So I might memorize all symptoms/treatments of malaria AND cholera. During one such exam preparations (must've been grade 7/8) by the end of it I had an epiphany that I'd just memorized the entire chapter. I even parroted it back to my mom making her happy that here I was ready to take on the diseases of this world. The notable point is that only after that realisation, I became very good at memorizing entire chapters. I remember by 9th grade I could almost memorize the 4-5 chapters of Biology. Surprisingly it happened mostly with Biology, a subject I hated the most, Chemistry equations which our teachers never explained because even they didn't know what the fuck was going on in there with those molecules(S8+8O2=8SO2?), dates in History and exact word-for-word quotes in languages -- all things that needed memorization. I could never remember say for example the 4-digit number plate of the cars which just passed by at 60kmph even after I had summed up its digits and they came out less than 30, and done so for all the 15 cars that passed by within 30 seconds or so (try this game, its fun and it'll improve your number skills).

And quite unsurprisingly, after my schooling, when this ability was no more required, I slowly started losing it. I always wondered if I could get that 'magic' back so to speak. Is there a name for this condition - the ability to channel immense memory powers when needed?

btw, if you guys are wondering this was an Indian school system. I also had other freakish abilities, but for now I'd leave it at that.

areaMan

17 jaar geledendiscuss

He did that? I missed it. Which book did he review?

areaMan

17 jaar geledendiscuss

Anybody having any views on Primer? I watched it after reading about it on Kottke. Around the sametime a few days earlier I had watched Memento. And the contrast was as clear as heaven and earth.

Memento was v.intellectually stimulating and if you watched it closely (maybe twice) everything was there in the movie itself to figure out the 'mindfuck' elements. The very minute details which you may still miss were clearly explained in some article online, so all in all it was a comprehensive experience. It made you feel good at the end of it because everything had an explanation.

Whereas Primer just seemed like a bad movie and maybe partially because it was low budget. Throughout the movie I just thought I couldn't clearly see what was there in the scene. Many scenes felt like there was no proper light or sound.(youtubeish). And the storyline seemed so out of whack, and I remember watching it thrice, and lurking on the official movie forums trying to figure out the timeline and 'mindfuck'ness of the movie, but it just seemed like the whole movie could sort of come together only if you could imagine that half the movie was not shown. There were so many timelines in forums, and all of them seemed to miss out on major plotlines, which they would explain with a handwave as "director is v.smart and intended it to be so and you could feel that's what he wanted to portray... it was just not shown on screen...blah blah". The director himself lurked out on forums and gave conflicting and deliberately confusing interviews at the time on indie media sites and honestly he never seemed to explain wtf was going on.

In the end instead of a real mindfuck movie (like Memento), to me it just felt like a bad movie, where nothing could be explained and everything was left half-finished. I am still open to be convinced otherwise though it seems unlikely.